My Coworker Was in Two Meetings at Once

I work in an office of about sixty people, so you know faces without always knowing names. One of them was a quiet analyst named Peter who wore the same grey cardigan often enough that it was basically part of him.

One Wednesday at ten I was in a conference room with Peter and four others, going over a spreadsheet. He was directly across from me for a solid forty minutes, grey cardigan, saying almost nothing, occasionally tapping his pen. I remember the pen because it annoyed me.

At lunch, a woman from the floor below mentioned, laughing, that Peter had gotten into a real fight with the printer that morning, jamming it, swearing at it, finally kicking the cabinet. She said it happened around ten, and two other people from her floor backed her up, times and all. Same grey cardigan. Same quiet Peter, briefly not quiet.

The floors are connected only by one slow elevator and one stairwell, both of which take a few minutes. There is no way to be arguing with a printer downstairs and sitting silently across from me upstairs in the same window of time. I said as much. The woman shrugged and said maybe I had the times wrong. I did not. I had watched Peter tap that pen from ten to ten forty without leaving the room.

I asked Peter about it, carefully, the next day. He looked at me strangely and said he had spent that whole morning in meetings, upstairs, and had not touched the printer in weeks. He seemed to be telling the truth. He usually was.

I do not have an explanation. I only know that six people, in two rooms, watched the same man do two different things at the same moment, and every one of us is certain we are right.